The Deep, Deep Country.
It is remarkable how limits both inspire us and frustrate us. Few things truly excite me anymore this is not due to some loss of purpose as in a depression or having lived a dull life. It is that I live with a renewed understanding dare I say a completely new position on life itself. Let us be honest when we come to the question of what is life anyway? We all have a particular understanding about life that is met by our own individual combined efforts to navigate supposed purpose, meaning, drive and ambition, by what we understand as love and what we look to as fear. It is in this vastness of opportunity that a person can expect to become an individual with a voice that is reasonably un-individualistic. This is where we typically see rational thought, absolute truth and human potential come into conflict and yet let us not forget the lack of understanding that we have towards true beauty, infallible love and our limitlessness hand in hand with our finite-hood.
For some reason we consistently come up against the grain of violence, fear, corruption and human contrived consecration steeped in humanism. We are a people who seek betterment through desolation, gain through greed, love through lust and power through coercion. It is these things that gave and give the Gospels credence, that articulate the power and the presence of a need we desperately grasp for in Jesus. As those that follow the way of Jesus we also must come to a place of recognition where we very well know that all that there is to gain we have also only a limited understanding of. The restrictions of our humanity have become the linchpin that dangles between our fingertips as we stand in complete incompleteness before a complete, perfect God.
It is in our desire for more that we have rapidly become a society that has cheapened our identities as men and women designed in the image of God himself. The constant struggle to move forward has exhausted us today, and our drive towards yesterday has us tripping over our own feet at this very moment. The great “getting ahead” and “living in yesterday” has driven us into an unrecognizable condition. Our lives have become staples of arrogance, we have become know nothings and we find security in this ignorance. We live by sayings that we deem as wise, but are unrecognizable in a life that is propelled by the Gospels. It is within the framework of sayings such as “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” that I recognize the irony and the lie behind the things we say to bring solace to a situation that demands more of our attention. Words have more power than any stick, or stone or gun or mega bomb. So I suggest that the saying could possibly be resolved by this saying I have put together…
“Tanks and bombs will level the land, but love will conquer all. (or will pull us together)”
Could it be that in our inability to truly understand, that we end up seeing the things we do understand? I would also be ready to admit that it is in the wake of destruction that we see potential, in the face of a dead man we see the potential of life. For who doesn’t say… what a life he would have lived if he hadn’t died, what a life she might have had if she only knew how long she had left. In the end it is just that, we our a people with a beginning and an end, we are an intricately created people with a design and an origin and a drive towards chaos and separation. Do we even understand the fullness of who God is? Can we possibly even believe that we have it all figured out? For my own experience has been riddled with passiveness and relative easy living. I have by only chance encountered a moment or two that has tested by mortality. My mortality has surfaced in moments where I have few if any answers to a situation. How can we question the direction of our lives, when we fail to understand the motion of time, the amount of heartbeats we’ll utilize, the complexity of our lives against the ingrained behaviors of another. When we struggle to get along with one another, how then can we ever see eye to eye with a perfect God? Of course this can be recognized in our inability to truly ever love Him in the way that he loves us- this is why we do nothing to get to Him who has done everything to be with us. This is not pride and conceit but stark realism and flesh and blood living. Thank God for God and even in that expression we are confused and left with our mouths wide open and fingers against our heads. I use the expression of we, and us and our because I’m uncertain about many things but at the least certain about a few things and a portion of my certainness is in knowing that we all have the same make up and the same needs, and the same purpose and the same requirements for life to be lived and death to be expected.
I said earlier that few things truly excite me anymore, and I meant that with every ounce of who I am (which I‘m still unconvinced that I could possibly even know what that means). It seems quite obvious that I should write a moment or two about the very things that do excite me- for if it is true that we can see the demand for beauty through the wreckage of life, that we can see the calm behind the storm, that through death we see life then it would be without question that in the absolute meaningless of the things we do day in and day out (that we grow frustrated with in calling “life”) that we would find the things we are now living for. It is in the whisper of a “I love you,” in the wrapping fingers of a babies hand around your thumb, in the bells that ring out of a wedding chapel and the possibilities of a better tomorrow that we find enjoyment and possibility. It is not within the framework of a simple life lived but with the desire of wanting more of what matters most. Or at least being aware enough to understand those things as mattering the most. Faith has a way of centering a person, and it is typical of those that claim to live a complex life that they are truly living a simple life made up of a complex mix of meaningless activity. The Gospels bring you into a reality that is more real, more desirable, more entrusted than any other reality we have since come to know. Even the definition of love is questioned by our present society, yet ask a husband who just kissed his new wife or the mother who just birthed her first child- ask them what love is and they will only need to smile back in order to make their point. In my love for Jesus, and His love for me, in my love for my wife and for our readied expectations for our son this December I find true love, and I find true enjoyment in this life that is riddled with few things were fighting for let alone worth living for. I live far more complex life than you who chooses to live for what you may experience or demand as a “complex” life- but it is of the good complex that I live.
Paul says often in his letters that he has been chosen, predestined and that we also have had and will have a similar experience. 1 Corinthians 9:16 has Paul stating this to those in Corinth “Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” I would suggest by prior experience and again just by my own expectations of life that we are all called into purpose and this purpose is wrapped up in the will of God. I have been called to preach the Gospel, in the same way that my brother has also been called to preach the Gospel. We live on separate sides of the state, we have been purposed for different churches, for different people, for a different time and with two different (yet similar) voices. Sometimes I wonder how all of this works out, you know just trying to figure out the will of God and the direction that he’s taking all of us. It’s in wondering this that I realize that God has a design and a will that we live in when we come into relationship with Him. Again more confusion over things that shouldn’t be too troublesome yet let’s be honest these things are peculiar and engage us on a gross level ultimately consuming all of our hearts, minds and souls (just the way it should be within living out the will of God) We may wonder why, or where, or how, or when and yet with God we can rest assure that He knows just what He is doing and how He’s going to go about doing it.
Perhaps this is why work has seemingly become unbearable, or why I regularly have a desire to farm, or why I look in the eyes of the retired and the aged and I scream “Not me!” or how I look at all my “stuff” and I go “No more, please!” This may just be why I haven’t written in a while, or why I always say I will but I don’t, why I get an idea and it just stays in my head as an idea, why I desire and drive towards camp fires, wedding dances, and getting an ice cream at the local ice creamery. Potentially it’s in the little things that I recognize to be truly big that I realize just how much more I want those things to be everything, every day. Some would suggest that the intimate kiss of your wife if had everyday would eventually tire, the dirty palms of a days hard work would fade, the preaching of the Gospel would eventually burn you out, the having of children would become seemingly ordinary and unremarkable. These suggestions would be utterly wrong and immature in thought and relationship. For perhaps someone could tire from going to a sun-side resort, wining and dining at a favorite restaurant, having the newest and the greatest of technologies that are out dated as they reach your hands. These are things that you can grow tired of, but the love of a wife, the cry of a newborn, the work of your own hands, your life wrapped up in the Gospels, your recognizing that life does indeed matter, and that God loves you infinitely. These things never grow tiresome, and are worth fighting for, dying for, living for over and over again because these things are everything because they are of God and we have the opportunity to take part in Him and in everything that is God's.
For some reason we consistently come up against the grain of violence, fear, corruption and human contrived consecration steeped in humanism. We are a people who seek betterment through desolation, gain through greed, love through lust and power through coercion. It is these things that gave and give the Gospels credence, that articulate the power and the presence of a need we desperately grasp for in Jesus. As those that follow the way of Jesus we also must come to a place of recognition where we very well know that all that there is to gain we have also only a limited understanding of. The restrictions of our humanity have become the linchpin that dangles between our fingertips as we stand in complete incompleteness before a complete, perfect God.
It is in our desire for more that we have rapidly become a society that has cheapened our identities as men and women designed in the image of God himself. The constant struggle to move forward has exhausted us today, and our drive towards yesterday has us tripping over our own feet at this very moment. The great “getting ahead” and “living in yesterday” has driven us into an unrecognizable condition. Our lives have become staples of arrogance, we have become know nothings and we find security in this ignorance. We live by sayings that we deem as wise, but are unrecognizable in a life that is propelled by the Gospels. It is within the framework of sayings such as “Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” that I recognize the irony and the lie behind the things we say to bring solace to a situation that demands more of our attention. Words have more power than any stick, or stone or gun or mega bomb. So I suggest that the saying could possibly be resolved by this saying I have put together…
“Tanks and bombs will level the land, but love will conquer all. (or will pull us together)”
Could it be that in our inability to truly understand, that we end up seeing the things we do understand? I would also be ready to admit that it is in the wake of destruction that we see potential, in the face of a dead man we see the potential of life. For who doesn’t say… what a life he would have lived if he hadn’t died, what a life she might have had if she only knew how long she had left. In the end it is just that, we our a people with a beginning and an end, we are an intricately created people with a design and an origin and a drive towards chaos and separation. Do we even understand the fullness of who God is? Can we possibly even believe that we have it all figured out? For my own experience has been riddled with passiveness and relative easy living. I have by only chance encountered a moment or two that has tested by mortality. My mortality has surfaced in moments where I have few if any answers to a situation. How can we question the direction of our lives, when we fail to understand the motion of time, the amount of heartbeats we’ll utilize, the complexity of our lives against the ingrained behaviors of another. When we struggle to get along with one another, how then can we ever see eye to eye with a perfect God? Of course this can be recognized in our inability to truly ever love Him in the way that he loves us- this is why we do nothing to get to Him who has done everything to be with us. This is not pride and conceit but stark realism and flesh and blood living. Thank God for God and even in that expression we are confused and left with our mouths wide open and fingers against our heads. I use the expression of we, and us and our because I’m uncertain about many things but at the least certain about a few things and a portion of my certainness is in knowing that we all have the same make up and the same needs, and the same purpose and the same requirements for life to be lived and death to be expected.
I said earlier that few things truly excite me anymore, and I meant that with every ounce of who I am (which I‘m still unconvinced that I could possibly even know what that means). It seems quite obvious that I should write a moment or two about the very things that do excite me- for if it is true that we can see the demand for beauty through the wreckage of life, that we can see the calm behind the storm, that through death we see life then it would be without question that in the absolute meaningless of the things we do day in and day out (that we grow frustrated with in calling “life”) that we would find the things we are now living for. It is in the whisper of a “I love you,” in the wrapping fingers of a babies hand around your thumb, in the bells that ring out of a wedding chapel and the possibilities of a better tomorrow that we find enjoyment and possibility. It is not within the framework of a simple life lived but with the desire of wanting more of what matters most. Or at least being aware enough to understand those things as mattering the most. Faith has a way of centering a person, and it is typical of those that claim to live a complex life that they are truly living a simple life made up of a complex mix of meaningless activity. The Gospels bring you into a reality that is more real, more desirable, more entrusted than any other reality we have since come to know. Even the definition of love is questioned by our present society, yet ask a husband who just kissed his new wife or the mother who just birthed her first child- ask them what love is and they will only need to smile back in order to make their point. In my love for Jesus, and His love for me, in my love for my wife and for our readied expectations for our son this December I find true love, and I find true enjoyment in this life that is riddled with few things were fighting for let alone worth living for. I live far more complex life than you who chooses to live for what you may experience or demand as a “complex” life- but it is of the good complex that I live.
Paul says often in his letters that he has been chosen, predestined and that we also have had and will have a similar experience. 1 Corinthians 9:16 has Paul stating this to those in Corinth “Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” I would suggest by prior experience and again just by my own expectations of life that we are all called into purpose and this purpose is wrapped up in the will of God. I have been called to preach the Gospel, in the same way that my brother has also been called to preach the Gospel. We live on separate sides of the state, we have been purposed for different churches, for different people, for a different time and with two different (yet similar) voices. Sometimes I wonder how all of this works out, you know just trying to figure out the will of God and the direction that he’s taking all of us. It’s in wondering this that I realize that God has a design and a will that we live in when we come into relationship with Him. Again more confusion over things that shouldn’t be too troublesome yet let’s be honest these things are peculiar and engage us on a gross level ultimately consuming all of our hearts, minds and souls (just the way it should be within living out the will of God) We may wonder why, or where, or how, or when and yet with God we can rest assure that He knows just what He is doing and how He’s going to go about doing it.
Perhaps this is why work has seemingly become unbearable, or why I regularly have a desire to farm, or why I look in the eyes of the retired and the aged and I scream “Not me!” or how I look at all my “stuff” and I go “No more, please!” This may just be why I haven’t written in a while, or why I always say I will but I don’t, why I get an idea and it just stays in my head as an idea, why I desire and drive towards camp fires, wedding dances, and getting an ice cream at the local ice creamery. Potentially it’s in the little things that I recognize to be truly big that I realize just how much more I want those things to be everything, every day. Some would suggest that the intimate kiss of your wife if had everyday would eventually tire, the dirty palms of a days hard work would fade, the preaching of the Gospel would eventually burn you out, the having of children would become seemingly ordinary and unremarkable. These suggestions would be utterly wrong and immature in thought and relationship. For perhaps someone could tire from going to a sun-side resort, wining and dining at a favorite restaurant, having the newest and the greatest of technologies that are out dated as they reach your hands. These are things that you can grow tired of, but the love of a wife, the cry of a newborn, the work of your own hands, your life wrapped up in the Gospels, your recognizing that life does indeed matter, and that God loves you infinitely. These things never grow tiresome, and are worth fighting for, dying for, living for over and over again because these things are everything because they are of God and we have the opportunity to take part in Him and in everything that is God's.
posted by Lance Pearce | 2:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home